Audiophile Meets Videophile- October 2004 - page 2 of 3
Being an audiophile at heart, the homeowner has most of his gear on two small racks to the left of the seating position. There is a trend lately to have your gear hidden behind faux walls or in discreet cabinets. However, these little design tricks cost money and this system owner opted to put his focus into room design and gear.
Looking up, one can’t miss the large three-gun CRT hanging from the ceiling. It is an Electrohome Marquee 8500 specially prepared by Tim Martin of E-Tech Systems with factory fresh tubes and the full set of Mike Parker modifications. D-ILA and DLP projectors with their small size and falling price tags now dominate the projector market, but they still have their disadvantages and there are still many who prefer the look of a CRT projector. When mounting one of these beefy projectors to the ceiling, much care must be taken to ensure that it is adequately secured. As this unit can sometimes weigh over 100 pounds, it takes several strong people to hoist the projector up and get it locked onto the ceiling mounts. The installer gets the projector aimed at the right angle then does the fine-tuning with internal settings, including convergence and contrast, to name just a few. Because of the weight of the projector, it can have a tendency to tip, causing the images to slowly drift downward. This can be avoided by cranking the mounting brackets extremely tight on old projector mounts. Newer ones tend to have locks that don’t allow the projector to move at all, so even if you are putting an old CRT projector in your theater, research mounting brackets to see if there is one that works for your projector that will easily lock in place. Getting these projectors aimed properly is absolutely not a one-person job, so you don’t want to be calling your friends over to help you adjust your projector when the bottom of the picture is disappearing off the screen.
Having a video set-up guru who can help get your projector really looking good is essential to truly enjoying your home theater system. Sure, you can fiddle with the projector’s setting and can probably eyeball it to get it looking decent, but the tricks that truly talented video set-up professionals can work can be the difference between having a good theater and an amazing one. It can also be a cost saver in the long run, as many people will turn up the brightness on their projectors extremely high to make them look better, but this dramatically shortens the life of the CRT tubes, which can be costly and difficulty to replace. When the projector is really set up correctly, it is often less taxing on the tubes. In this case, Audio Images brought in Nicholas Grieco of Joe Kane Productions, who spent the better part of two days getting the video system dialed in perfectly.
The gear in the equipment rack is an assorted bag of brands that the system owner has assembled over the years. To handle the power conditioning and to ensure the rack doesn’t tip over in an earthquake, the stout PS Audio P600 dominates the bottom shelf of the taller equipment rack. Moving up from there, a Sony SACD 330 ES changer is used when the owner wants to provide continuous carousel music play. For day to day listening, the new Theta Digital Compli universal player handles DVD, DVD-A, CD and SACD playback. All the audio is routed through a Theta Digital Casablanca II preamp/processor. Stereo amplification is provided by two Theta Digital Enterprise Mono Block amplifiers, placed high-end audio style in the center of the room between the main speakers. Surround and center channel amplification is handled by a Theta Digital Dreadnaught Multichannel amplifier that sits atop a Symposium Acoustics Ultra Platform on the floor between the equipment rack and subwoofer.
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takes several strong people to hoist the projector up and get it locked onto the ceiling mounts. The installer gets the projector aimed at the right angle then does the fine-tuning with internal settings, including convergence and contrast, to name just a few. Because of the weight of the projector, it can have a tendency to tip, causing the images to slowly drift downward. This can be avoided by cranking the mounting brackets extremely tight on old projector mounts. Newer ones tend to have locks that don’t allow the projector to move at all, so even if you are putting an old CRT projector in your theater, research mounting brackets to see if there is one that works for your projector that will easily lock in place. Getting these projectors aimed properly is absolutely not a one-person job, so you don’t want to be calling your friends over to help you adjust your projector when the bottom of the picture is disappearing off the screen.
Having a video set-up guru who can help get your projector really looking good is essential to truly enjoying your home theater system. Sure, you can fiddle with the projector’s setting and can probably eyeball it to get it looking decent, but the tricks that truly talented video set-up professionals can work can be the difference between having a good theater and an amazing one. It can also be a cost saver in the long run, as many people will turn up the brightness on their projectors extremely high to make them look better, but this dramatically shortens the life of the CRT tubes, which can be costly and difficulty to replace. When the projector is really set up correctly, it is often less taxing on the tubes. In this case, Audio Images brought in Nicholas Grieco of Joe Kane Productions, who spent the better part of two days getting the video system dialed in perfectly.
